Touring Singers
- Brad Chapman
- May 1, 2016
- 3 min read
Panic Time:
There's a cycle I'd like to talk about today --- of artist singers on tour needing doctors and voice therapists. As a result, they spend a lot of money just to get their voice back to finish the night’s show.
Simply put; what happens is that the singer may have only been doing singing gigs a couple of nights a week; and then, all the sudden the singer becomes very famous. Therefore, a tour is set up for the singer.
Because the singer has not learned what to do to gain vocal stamina in order to make it through the tour, its panic time --- since the singer lost their voice and the show MUST GO ON.
Quick Fix:
The tour manager contacts an ear, nose, and throat doctor. If the ENT doctor is one of the better ones; they're going to charge them three to $500 just to look at the singers’ throat. They may prescribe steroids or tell the singer that they can’t sing for a while and or schedule surgery. It all depends on the damage they see. There may be acute edema, hemorrhaging, polyps or nodules.
Depending on the doctor they may recommend a voice therapist who will charge them $250 or $500 to get their voice back for that day. Hopefully the artist will keep a recording of the exercises in a file to use every day.
Maybe the singer may be able to get through a few more shows, but then it happens again. They lose their voice because of the way they are singing and yelling.
Real Problem:
That is what's causing the problem. When the singer works with a doctor and voice therapist, usually the voice therapist is an Opera singer; so, the singer is usually not willing to retrain with an Opera singer. For this reason, the singer only does the voice therapy and then, goes back out on the road --- and the cycle continues (back to the doctor and voice therapist).
Recently there has been some very famous people willing to talk about losing their voices on tour and the process of getting it back: Steve Tyler, Adele, and Sam Smith to name a few. In these cases, there were huge financial losses for everyone involved in the singers’ cancellations of their concert tour --- and disappointed fans.
One of the worst situations that I am personally aware of is --- after the pop singer had been training for years with an Operatic voice therapist, the singer needed him on tour to perform voice therapy every day of the tour. As you might imagine; maintaining an artist’s voice while on tour is very expensive problem.
Good News:
The good news is you can train vocal stamina in your genre and your style. The result is that you’ll then have excellent stamina on tour --- and will have averted the cyclic problem of voice damage and repair.
In my experience, I've am very happy to say that many of my touring artists have never needed me (as a vocal therapist) after they trained in vocal stamina. I believe this is because I demonstrate the solutions in the singer’s personal style, which they are happy to learn and embrace.
One of many good examples is Kevin Cronin (the lead singer of REO Speedwagon), who has been touring for over 40 years and has never lost his voice --- nor does he need me any more after learning the vocal stamina training. He has his recordings of our sessions and uses these to keep his voice in shape.
Kevin knows what he's doing because he trained with me before the group started their album and tour. Today, he stills sounds like he’s in his late 20’s. Reference this 2016 tour clip (especially near the end of the song:
Brad Chapman Vocal Pre-Producer
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